Gurs Internment Camp - Registered letter sent to Argentina in 1941 by German Jewish prisoner! Envelope with unusual registering label sent to Argentina in 1941. Gurs Internment Camp was a internment camp and prisoner of war camp constructed in 1939 in Gurs, a site in southwestern France, not far from Pau. The camp was originally set up by the French government after the fall of Catalonia at the end of the Spanish Civil War to control those who fled Spain out of fear of retaliation from Francisco Franco's regime. At the start of World War II, the French government interned 4,000 German Jews as "enemy aliens," along with French socialists political leaders and those who opposed the war with Germany. After the Vichy government signed an armistice with the Nazis in 1940, it became an Internment camp for mainly German Jews, as well as people considered dangerous by the government.

Missing back flap.